Looking to plan your freight forwarding budget and order schedule?
Then take a look at the AFS Freight Forecast Barometer to see what’s likely to happen over the coming months.
Current rating 5: Changeable
The Year of the Fire Horse
Analysis – March 2026
As the Lunar New Year holiday comes to a close in China, we enter the year of the Fire Horse. A Fire Horse is “known for bringing dynamic, fast-paced, and often intense energy”, so what should we expect in 2026?
Having seen rates soften in the Far East / Westbound freight market pre-CNY, one carrier has reported a roll pool of circa 21,000 TEU’s. The increase in bookings has left the carriers with an excess of containers ready to leave China and so, over the coming weeks, there will be disruption and delays to best laid plans.
The Suez Canal
The biggest question to be asked about shipping in 2026 is, “when will the carriers go back through the Suez Canal?”. With geo-political tension still high, carriers have again backed off any commitment to routing the large vessels through the Suez.
The raft of rumor’s about re-commencing transits have now cooled and so, at the time of writing, there is not set date for the shipping lines to alter their course from around the Cape of Good Hope.
Watch this space.
President Trump
In the longest-ever State of the Union address, President Trump doubled down on trade, saying “everything was working well” and describing the Supreme Court’s rejection of the bulk of his sweeping tariffs as an “unfortunate ruling.”
The US President then introduced a 10% blanket duty on imports set shortly after Friday’s ruling, and this emphasises the turbulent nature of the current global landscape.
Disclaimer
It’s notoriously difficult to predict shipping prices over the course of a year. You never know when a major incident will lead to a spike in prices. This could be due to the outbreak of war; vital shipping lanes and ports being closed or extreme weather conditions. It’s important to note that while prices can spike overnight, it can take months for prices to return to something approaching normality. What we can assess, however, is what is affecting freight capacity and preventing prices from returning to base levels.
